What's changing and why?
We’re narrowing the network of third-party pharmacies that we directly work with. Specifically, for clients who do not buy their medications from either us, Vetsource, or the office of another veterinarian, we are now asking clients to send in their own prescriptions. We know how important your pet’s medications are to you, and we direct significant staffing resources towards client prescription management. However, we have to balance these resources against the staffing resources needed to answer a substantial volume of client emails and phone calls every day, many of them from clients with important medical questions. For some more context, when your human doctor submits a prescription to your pharmacy, they use an electronic prescription submittal system that veterinarians do not have access to. We are stuck with a much more manual and labor intensive process.
At the end of the day, we want to spend our time fully answering all of your questions, whether you are with us in the clinic or at home with a concern, rather than waiting on hold, trying to get through to CVS to call in your prescription.
What are my new options for filling my prescriptions?
- You can directly order them from our e-commerce platform Unleashed Vetmart. We ship all orders over $20 for free, or can have them ready for pickup. We price medications very competitively with anything that you can find online.
- You can call or email us for a refill (shipped or pickup).
- You can buy them from our partner pharmacy Vetsource. Vetsource is a great resource for medications that we don’t sell and food. However, for medications on Vetsource that we also sell directly, you can usually get a better price by buying from us directly.
- You can request that we send the prescription to another one of your veterinarians.
- You can pick up a signed prescription, or we can send one to you in the mail, and you can fill it at any pharmacy of your choice.
What about prescription diets?
For prescription diets, we work directly with the following vendors:
- Purina
- Hills Pet Nutrition
- Rayne Nutrition
- For Royal Canin diets, please order your refills from Vetsource.
So if I want to fill my prescription at Chewy, PetMeds, CVS, etc., can I still do that?
Yes, you still have 100% freedom to fill your prescriptions at any pharmacy! The change is just that you’ll now need to send non-partner third-party pharmacies your prescriptions yourself instead of having our staff do it or having our staff respond to their approval requests. Some of these vendors will want you to paper mail in your written prescription.
When does this policy go into effect?
This policy goes into effect on Jan 1, 2025.
Does it cost more to buy directly from you than from an internet pharmacy?
No, it does not! We continually perform careful analyses and price our medications at the lowest rate that we can find on the internet. For instance, as of 07-02-25, the price of Apoquel is $3.10/pill from us vs. $3.10/pill from Chewy. As another example, the price of 100 mg generic modified cyclosporine costs $2.59 / pill from us and costs $2.59 from Chewy. Furthermore, we offer a 5% discount on autoship orders. We’d encourage all of our clients to compare our prices to anything you find on the internet and see for themselves how competitive we’ve priced our medications. And when you buy straight from us, shipping is always free, there will be no approval delays, and you know your medication is coming from a trusted source.
Are there any exceptions?
Of course! If we don’t directly sell the medication you need, we will call it in to a pharmacy that does. And for clients that have emergency shortages of medications, we will always find a way to get you the medication you need in time, whether that be calling it in to a third-party pharmacy or overnighting it to you from our office. Your pet’s health always comes first!
